


only to no home i'd ever known

by fairytiger



Category: Whiskey Cavalier (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 03:00:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20146501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairytiger/pseuds/fairytiger
Summary: She doesn’t break in to Will’s place anymore, mostly because she doesn’t have to, walking home with him every night and making the turn toward his place instead of hers. They put on a movie they never actually watch, fall asleep on his couch, and act like it was an accident the next morning.or, "whoops we're dating"





	only to no home i'd ever known

Movie night becomes a thing.

Frankie couldn’t tell you how.

The night she goes over to talk about team leader, it’s only because her cell phone is out of minutes.

_(“Who even has a cell phone plan with minutes anymore?”_

_“People who don’t want to talk to other people.”)_

The next time, it’s because Will invites her. He says it’s to debrief, but Sleepless in Seattle is on when she arrives and there’s too much Chinese takeout on the table for one person. 

“You’re determined to make me watch the entire Hanks canon, aren’t you?”

“Oh, no,” Will says through a bite of dumpling. “Just Hanks/Ryan.”

He gives her the last eggroll, and they don’t talk about work at all.

\--

Frankie shows up one night when her Internet is down. 

She gives him fair warning--fair by Frankie standards, at least, which is a cursory text saying _In the building. Unlock the door so I don’t have to stare at your “home sweet home” welcome mat._

“Let me guess, you have dial-up?” Will asks as she charges through the front door. “Someone needed to use the phone and bumped you off of a chatroom?”

“Ha ha.”

Frankie’s settling onto the couch when she sees a wine glass on the coffee table.

“Oh shit, am I--” she glances around the apartment before dropping her voice. “Am I interrupting?”

Will tilts his head.

“Interrupting?”

“Sorry, it just literally never occurred to me that you might have someone over.”

“How nice.” But Will smiles when he says it, nodding towards the glass. “That one’s for you.”

“Oh.” The glass sits directly in front of her, purposefully placed, like he knew it was where she would sit. Like it’s not just a side of the couch, but hers. 

She lifts the glass to her nose. “Is that--”

“That label you recommended. I didn’t think I was a Malbec person, but you were right, it’s good.” Will takes a seat beside her, and smiles over his own laptop. “Take your time.”

\--

The drop-ins happen more often after that. Sometimes it’s Will’s idea, sometimes Frankie’s, but it’s always last minute, and there’s always a reason. 

_My upstairs neighbor has taken up the violin. Coming over so I don’t stick the bow through his eye._

_Still trying to recreate that pasta arrabiata we had in Rome. I’m on batch thirty-two and I think I’ve deadened my tastebuds. Come tell me if it tastes right?_

_Okay, I’m not afraid of spiders, but I am definitely against them showing up unannounced in my shower. I’m going to wait him out at your place, and if there’s still shampoo in my hair, I don’t want to hear it._

Will never once thinks that she’s inventing excuses because Frankie’s never been the type to need them. And even if she is, the slightly pathetic truth is that Will’s just grateful for the company. He isn’t cut out for the solitary lifestyle, but finds himself in one anyway, and it’s nice to have someone else there to break up the nights of falling asleep in front of soccer games and History Channel documentaries. 

There are still documentaries most nights, and the occasional hockey game if Frankie can find one, but it’s mostly just background noise as they work in their respective corners of the couch. 

“What time is it?” she asks after a particularly lengthy work session, pressing her hands to her eyes to ease the burn from the computer screen.

“10:30,” Will says through a yawn.

“And I’m this tired? When did I get old?”

“It was 35 for me.”

“I’m surprised you remember that far back.”

He sends a pillow flying in her direction, but she catches it, her eyes immediately closing as she presses her cheek into the silk fabric.

“Mmph,” she mumbles. “Can’t sleep. Gotta go home.”

“Do you?”

He doesn’t mean to say it, but it comes out anyway, his voice tentative and careful; an offer without any expectation that she take it.

“Just this once,” she says as she buries her face into the pillow further.

\--

When Frankie wakes the next morning, it’s to a slight pounding in her head and Will nowhere to be found.

It’s the last part, combined with the blanket draped over her, that makes her stomach flip in a way she’d rather not examine. She’s searching wildly for her shoes when the front door opens.

“Hey,” Will says, bright as the light streaming through the windows. Two coffees balance in one hand, a pastry bag in the other. “I got bagels, hope that’s okay.”

He says it like it’s an old routine. Frankie grabs the bag to hide the flush crawling across her skin.

“Only if there’s--” she stares inside. “Blueberry.”

She waits for a retort, a victorious “I knew it.” But Will just smiles, sliding the coffee to her across the kitchen island.

“So I’ve been going over the directive from Peru and I want your take…”

\--

The day he finds her there without warning is the day he didn’t see coming.

But maybe he should have.

Will suspects something’s wrong when she takes a sick day, and knows for sure when Jai explains her absence with a simple and solemn, “It’s March 5th.”

Will flashes on a date from a newspaper clipping and heads straight home, calling Frankie on the way.

“It’s me--I mean, it’s Will. Listen, I talked to Jai...I just want to make sure you’re okay. If you want to talk or anything, I’m here. Just call me or--_holy shit_.”

He jumps ten feet in the doorway. Frankie’s sitting in her usual spot on the couch: pajamas on, eyes red, The Fugitive playing on the TV.

“You need better snacks,” she sniffs, picking at a bowl of pita chips in her lap.

Later, he’ll ask how she broke in. Later, he’ll defend the pita chips, opening the red pepper hummus and telling her to try again.

For now, he takes a careful seat next to her, his heart still pounding in surprise. 

“My mom had a crush on Tommy Lee Jones,” she says, nodding toward the screen.

“I’m a Harrison Ford man, myself, but I can see it.”

She laughs, a little watery, and scoots closer to him.

“You would,” she says, but it sounds a lot like, “thank you.”

\--

When they get back from Peru, Frankie wonders if this thing they’re doing will stop. 

If it _should _stop. 

She doesn’t break in to Will’s place anymore, mostly because she doesn’t have to, walking home with him every night and making the turn toward his place instead of hers. They put on a movie they never actually watch, fall asleep on his couch, and act like it was an accident the next morning. 

“I have to stay late,” Will says one night, nodding toward Ray waiting for him in the corner booth. “Susan stuff.”

“Ah.” Frankie adjusts her face to understanding rather than disappointment and turns to leave, when there’s a gentle pull on her hand. Will presses something small and metal into her palm.

“So you don’t take another ten years off my life.”

A smile passes between them. Frankie’s fingers brush against his as she clasps the key in her hand.

“You don’t have that many left, after all.”

\--

It’s 2:00 am when Will gets home, after talking Ray down from the “I accidentally said ‘I love you’ during sex” ledge. 

(_“Just pretend it never happened. I promise you that’s what Susan is doing, and what I’m going to do as soon as I leave this bar.”)_

His apartment is dark when he enters, no sign of Frankie, and Will wonders if he pushed too much too soon for this, whatever it is. 

Then he sees the soft white glow from the bedroom. The reading light on the nightstand reveals Frankie propped up in bed, book in her lap, one arm behind her head as she fiddles with a strand of hair. 

“Am I on your side?” she asks, eyes never leaving her book.

“No.” Will clears his throat. “No,” he says again, more sure this time. “You’re fine.”

\--

He wakes to an empty bed the next morning, and he’s half-convinced he dreamed it, blaming the four beers he had with Ray.

But beer doesn’t explain Frankie being in his kitchen, wearing his FBI shirt and matching sweatpants. They ride low enough to expose her scar, a thin pale line just above her hip bone, and it occurs to Will that he knows exactly what that sliver of skin feels like on his hands.

“Hungry?” she asks, pushing something around in a pan with a spatula.

“You don’t like eggs,” is all he can think to say. 

“These aren’t for me.”

She doesn’t meet his eyes when she hands him the omelette, but Will doesn’t mind. 

He doesn’t trust what his own would say, anyway.

\--

It’s inevitable, what happens next.

Night after night of sleeping together without _sleeping _together, and Frankie can only take so much before she loses it.

“Are you ever going to touch me?”

Will looks at her over his reading glasses, which have absolutely no right looking as good on him as they do.

“Do you want me to?”

“Would I be asking if I didn’t?”

“I didn’t want to assume anything.”

Frankie huffs in frustration.

“I’m wearing your clothes to bed, I have a toothbrush in your bathroom, I think it’s safe to assume--”

Will wraps an arm around her side, pulling her on top of him in one swift motion. He keeps his eyes on her as he sets his glasses aside, his mouth inches away from hers. 

“Better?”

Frankie smiles, a little breathless.

“Almost.”

She gently places the glasses back on his face before she kisses him.

\--

“That was the only time,” Frankie says after.

“Right.”

“Never again.”

“Got it.”

A pause.

“Okay, only one night.”

“Deal.”

\--

It’s not just one night.

Or two nights.

On the fifth night, Frankie joins him in the shower, and when they stay in there until the water runs cold, Will stops keeping count.

\--

It gets messy after that.

Anyone could have told them it would, but Susan is the one to actually say it. 

The whole team is at a club in Helsinki, celebrating a successful mission with strong drinks and Finnish pop music. Frankie’s on the dance floor, dancing mostly with Susan and only a little bit with the tall Nordic god that bought her a drink an hour earlier. 

She looks around for the guys and spots Will at their table, chatting with the waitress. He’s smiling, arching an eyebrow in that way he does when he makes a joke he thinks is particularly funny but rarely is. The waitress laughs anyway, playfully shoving his arm, her hand lingering on his bicep.

Like he can feel her stare, Will turns to find Frankie in the crowd. He glances from her to the guys hands on her hips, and even across the room, she can see his throat bob, his jaw tense, before looking away.

“Careful,” Susan yells over the music, nodding toward Will.

Frankie shrugs.

“It’s fine.”

“Is it?”

Frankie doesn’t respond. The club is too loud, too hot, the bass reverberating all the way to her bones.

\--

“Are you sleeping with anyone else?” 

They’re back home--home being New York, of course, and not Will’s apartment. Frankie has her own home, after all, though lately it feels more like the most expensive storage unit in Hell’s Kitchen.

“What?” Will asks, toothbrush hanging from the corner of his mouth.

“Are you sleeping with anyone else?”

He spits.

“We haven’t spent a night apart in weeks. Who would I possibly be sleeping with?”

“That barista who adds a smiley face next to your name.”

“Hey, Miguel is in a committed relationship.”

“You still haven’t answered the question,” Frankie says, hitting him with a hard look. He looks right back.

“No, I’m not sleeping with anyone else.”

“Good.” Then, after a beat. “Don’t.”

Will flicks off the light, but even in the dark, she knows he’s smiling. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks as always to tango for her invaluable beta and friendship


End file.
